Family and Education

bap. 17 Nov. 1664, 1st s. of Edward Bayntun. m. 1 Sept. 1685, Lady Anne Wilmot, da. of John, 2nd Earl of Rochester, and coh. to her bro. Charles, 3rd Earl, 1s. 1da. suc. fa. 1679.1

Offices Held

J.p. Wilts. 1683-June 1688, Oct. 1688-d., dep. lt. 1685-June 1688, Oct. 1688-d.; freeman, Devizes ?1685-7; commr. for assessment, Wilts. 1689-90, col. of militia ft. ?1689-d.2

Biography

Bayntun, who was only 15 when his father died, was brought up with his brothers and sisters under the tutelage of George Johnson, his mother, by the terms of his father’s will, having been forbidden ‘to intermeddle with their education or estate’. In August 1682 Sir Francis North reported ‘some very handsome expressions ... of his loyalty and good affections to the King’s service’, although he was one ‘on whom the factious have been very desirous to make impressions to the contrary’. As a sound Tory ‘of a very considerable estate’, he was made a justice of the peace while still in his teens, and was returned for the family borough of Chippenham, probably without a contest, shortly before he came of age. His marriage was probably due to his uncle, Nicholas Bayntun, Rochester’s neigh-hour at Woodstock. He was totally inactive, but was listed by Danby as in opposition, and was removed from the Devizes corporation in 1687. In the same year he bought Farleigh Castle from (Sir) Edward Hungerford and thenceforth this was his principal residence. The King’s electoral agents reported that Bayntun and Richard Kent ‘had the chief interest’ in Chippenham, and in April 1688 affirmed their confidence in the candidates. But in reply to the lord lieutenant’s questions on the repeal of the Test Act and Penal Laws, Bayntun declared that ‘when he hears the debates of the House of Commons he shall do as his conscience directs him’, and ‘he shall be for choosing loyal men, and leaves it to their conscience to do as they think fit’. He was then removed from local office. Re-elected with his uncle in 1689, apparently unopposed, he was again totally inactive in the Convention. He was buried at Bromham on 2 July 1691. His widow married the eldest son of Fulke Greville. He was the last of the family to sit in Parliament, but his daughter brought the Spye Park estate to her husband, Edward Rolt, who was returned for Chippenham as a Tory in 1722.3

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Authors: Basil Duke Henning / Geoffrey Jaggar

Notes

• 1. Burke, Commoners, iv. 685; The Ancestor, xi. 24; Le Neve’s Knights (Harl. Soc. viii), 32.
• 2. CSP Dom. 1685, p. 178; H. Bull, Hist. Devizes, 325; PC2/72/562; Eg. 1626, f. 51.
• 3. PCC 137 King; CSP Dom. 1682, pp. 347-8; Luttrell, i. 395; A. Malet, Malet Fam. 49; Wilts RO, 473/377.